Hi, everyone!!! Ok, so the holidays got me way off track from wedding planning but my holiday break is almost over which means everything will be back to normal. I promise I'll be updating soon with the whole dress shopping story (late, I know!) and then I'll get caught up with everything else that's been going on. In the meantime I hope everyone has had a fantastic holiday! Can't wait to get back in the swing of wedding planning! We can finally say we're getting married THIS YEAR!!!

Hi, again! So Im finally getting round to telling you guys all about my dress shopping experience. Yes, I am a month or two late but better late than never, right?
Just to preface all of this, I did A LOT of research and preparation to find my dress. I even organized a Pinterest page with specifically which dresses I wanted to try on and which shops would possibly have them! In the end, I was very happy to be as prepared as I was BUT I ended up falling in love with a dress I had never even seen! Thats truly an amazing thing seeing as I would have sworn I had seen every possible dress currently available. My dress does have every. single. thing. I was looking for though and now I can honestly say I have experienced love at first sight!
I wont be posting any pictures of me in any of the dresses as I may have a nosey fiancé but please feel free to message or contact me on facebook if youre curious as to what the final dress looks like. I did post a picture of it a while back on the DisBrides Facebook page if you feel like digging. Ok, so here goes

On the Friday of that weekend everyone flew/drove down to South Florida. That night we barbequed and drank wine and basically just got excited for the next day!
The next morning we all got up early and got ready because the limo would be picking us up soon!
My mom and I right before heading out! Side note: I put way too much thought into the outfit that I would wear to shop for the dress but I loved it!

Courtney (MOH) and I with the limo!

All the girls before getting in and heading down to Miami!

We arrived at the Westin Colonnade about an hour later.

We checked into the rooms, got situated, and basically needed to head right back out if we wanted to grab a bite before the first dress appointment. We ended up eating at this really super cute little French café which is actually the place we got the macarons for later from.

The food was delicious but it ended up taking way too long. It got me all nervous so I couldnt really eat and then we had to push the first appointment back a bit. In the moment I was freaking out but it was totally not a problem. Here are some pics 

After we finally finished eating it was time for the first appointment! I was
nervous at first but I was so excited. The first shop definitely looked the part of what I had imagined but the service was just ok and it was a little crowded. They carried 3 of the dresses I had specifically wanted to try. I had expected them to suggest more outside of those three but they only showed me those which I was actually ok with.
I really liked the first dress but didnt get that feeling so we moved on to the second. The second has an a-line silhouette but it actually had this sort of narrow slip underneath that did not fit AT ALL. Now, I totally understand they only carry certain sample sizes but I really dont get how they can only accommodate such a small range of size. I am definitely not thin but Im not plus sized either and I just dont understand not carrying sizes at least somewhat doable for the average woman. There was absolutely no way to even tell what that dress COULD have looked like on me without the slip fitting at all. ANYWAY, all of that to say the second dress was a no go but I wasnt crazy about it anyway. Prior to shopping I thought that I may freak out or get upset if a dress didnt fit or something like that but in the moment I was totally calm and really nothing got to me. That is SO unlike me but I really hope it carries over to the rest of the planning and the big day! The last dress in that shop was actually very nice. We even tried it with a veil and got the price quote. I totally intended on that being the dress if we didnt find anything at the later shops and I would have been totally happy with it but we decided to move on to the next shop for the moment.
The next shop was Merlili Bridal.

This shop was about the same size as the first but I swear we were treated like the only people in there. We even got to work with the owner! I showed her my Pinterest board with all the dresses I liked and she liked that I was so prepared which was a good sign from the get go. They carried 5 or so of the dresses I chose so I was very excited. Some of those dresses were like Pinterest stars so it was exciting to get to try them on. Lilly (the owner) mentioned to me that she was going to pull one dress that I didnt mention but she thought it really had everything I wanted so I was happy to try it. I tried on one dress before that one that I liked but wasnt for me and then we moved on to Lillys suggestion, a tulle ball gown by Enzoani. I remember putting it on and it feeling totally different than the others. I knew I that I LOVED it but I wanted everyone elses opinions, too. When I came out everyone oohed and ahed and pretty much every single person just loved it. After that I tried on the next few that I had picked and while I really did like each and every one they just didnt even hold a candle to the Enzoani. It makes me feel like even more than a princess and it is so much better than Id ever dreamed. We decided that was THE dress but we would still go to the last appointment just in case. The sample I tried on was actually in a beige/champagne sort of color so we will be going back soon to try on an ivory sample but the dress has already been ordered in ivory.
After finding my dress we decided to use the extra time we had to try out some bridesmaids dresses. This shop just happened to carry 2 dresses I had specifically chosen as well. They both have bow details which, as you all know, I love! So I had the maid of honor be our model  Here are the first 2 we tried.

I loved them both but I decided that my dress is just way too formal for short dresses like these. Right after we decided on that, of course, Lilly comes out and suggests a dress I hadnt seen and guess what it was it!

It still has the bow detail on the shoulder, just in a less obvious way. Of course, this wont be the color. Well be doing it in blush and adding a brooch at the waistline. Lilly is holding one up to give the idea but the brooches are actually bow shaped and they still give that bit of bling look. Heres the dress in the right color.

I think the dresses will be really beautiful and flattering to everyone. I still cant believe Lilly, for all intents and purposes, chose both my wedding dress AND my bridesmaids dresses! Shes very talented 
Once we had chosen the bridesmaids dress I decided I needed to put my dress on one more time so thats what I did. I felt SO good in it and I am so excited for Ryan to see me walk down the aisle in it!
From there I announced that I had changed my mind and I had absolutely NO interest in going to the last appointment so we cancelled that one and wrapped things up at Merlili.
After finishing up with shopping we grabbed some Starbucks and hung around until it was time for dinner at Benihana which is always fun!

Then we headed back to the hotel. My mom and I had all the girls hang out in one room while we prepared our little surprise for them in the other. I had to take a minute for a picture on the spiral stairs!

We put out champagne and gave everyone little vintage boxes with M&Ms in our
colors and macarons with little boxes to take some home. Also, after taking our engagement pictures Ryan and I went to Basin White and I put together little tubes of bath salts for each person as a thank you for coming gift. We tied little ribbons with Cinderella carriages on them to add a little Disney touch.

Everyone loved their gifts and after enjoying some macarons and champagne we all decided to grab some drinks and bring them up to the rooftop pool and lounge area. We hung out on their amazing loungey furniture and put our feet in the hot tub. We even all got to talk about the room block and other wedding stuff which ended up helping me a lot (more on that later!).

After that we were all exhausted so it was time for bed. Funny side note: I guess because someone mentioned wedding dresses on our reservation, the hotel decided to decorate both our suites like we were on our honeymoon! Its funny to have kissing swans and rose petals on a bed youre going to sleep in with your mother! Here are Courtney and my mom cuddling with the honeymoon swans!

In the morning we headed back home and spent the rest of the weekend just hanging out with everyone. It was a super fun weekend and it was so cool to have all these important women in one place for the first time! It gets me so excited for wedding events in the future!
UP NEXT: Ill try to get you all caught up on everything wedding related that has happened since the dress shopping which is A LOT! Lets see if I can do it without writing a book! Thanks so much if you actually read all this!

Hey girl! I just wanted to drop by and say I love everythingggg about this wedding! DF and I were thinking about doing our engagement photos at Port Orleans as well, since we went to school and met in NOLA. Can't wait to hear more updates, and I'm super excited for you! Congrats on everything!!

Hey girl! I just wanted to drop by and say I love everythingggg about this wedding! DF and I were thinking about doing our engagement photos at Port Orleans as well, since we went to school and met in NOLA. Can't wait to hear more updates, and I'm super excited for you! Congrats on everything!!

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Thank you so much! I am so glad you like everything. If you do end up doing your photos at POR you will NOT regret it! There are just so many different, beautiful spots. If you can't tell, I am now very attached to that resort!

Now that I am done with writing that incredibly long dress shopping report, I want to catch you all up on wedding things that have happened since the dress weekend. There's a lot, so here goes!

- Bridesmaids dresses have been ordered. We had to rush because they were being discontinued within like a month from when we chose them. My MOH, Courtney, is amazing and gathered all the girls' measurements and info and got the dresses ordered right in time. Love her! Oh, and because we ordered 7 dresses, all of my alterations are free!

- When we placed the order for my dress we also picked out a crystal headband for me to wear. It kind of gives that princessy feel without actually wearing a tiara. If you've seen the pictures of my dress, I'm wearing the headband. It's lovely! With the headband and the illusion neckline of my dress I've decided that my wedding hairstyle will have to be an updo. Not a way-updo but something so that my hair doesn't cover my chest and back and the lace illusion detail on the dress. I need to do some research for hair inspiration soon. Stay tuned for that in the future!

- We haven't gone back yet to try the ivory sample of my dress because it isn't in yet. I actually need to email them to check on that. I'm antsy to see it in white!

- Our guest list has grown a bit and it looks like our guest count is going to be more like 120. Because of this, we had to crunch some budget numbers and Ryan and I have decided to save more to be able to contribute. I'm alright with this because it's very important to me that the people we really want to be there are able to come.

- We completed and sent in the room block. This was interesting but ended up not being so bad. I did have to write it out in some sort of chart to make it make sense in my head to do the math, though. We just asked everyone in immediate family and the wedding party to estimate how long theyd be staying and went from there. We only included 30 nights which I think/hope shouldnt be a problem to reach.

- After we sent in the questionnaire and room block we received our LOA. For some reason I always imagined the LOA being short. Like a letter. But I was wrong! My best advice is, even if you think you already know everything, definitely read through the whole agreement. Upon reading through ours I found out that we are no longer able to use an outside florist other than for personal floral at our vacations. I think you could do some things outside but other things had to be through Disney and I just didnt want the hassle of 2 florists so I had to give up the lovely outside florist we had found. I was a little upset at first but now I am really fine with it. I know Disney will do a beautiful job, I just think the outside florist may have been a little bit easier to work with. Oh, well!

- DIYs: We started trying out some mercury glass techniques. We want to do a bunch of mercury glass votives (with fake candles, of course) and also mercury glass floral containers. More about that later. Ill post pictures when we have more finished so you can see what Im thinking. I just love the look of mercury glass and its perfect to pull in our pewter color.

- Diane (our consultant) received and processed our LOA and room block and sent us our AP vouchers! So excited!!! Well be activating those soon. More on that later!

- We received our PLANNER! Yay! I got a call from Diane Bowen (yes, another Diane!) who will be our planner and I have also been in contact with her assistant, Jessica. So far they have been fantastic and have always responded to me in a timely manner. Loving them so far!

- We also received our planning kit which, honestly, I have looked at but I am not touching that for a bit. We have a few other things that are a bit more pressing to take care of now and that thing is a big undertaking!

- Finally, we found the brooches we want sewn into the waistline of the bridesmaids and also bracelets for each bridesmaid. I will post pictures of those soon!

Ok, so thats everything that happened during my hiatus. Of course, in the time it took me to write this even more has happened so be expecting another update very shortly! Love you all for reading!

Now that I am done with writing that incredibly long dress shopping report, I want to catch you all up on wedding things that have happened since the dress weekend. There's a lot, so here goes!

- Bridesmaids dresses have been ordered. We had to rush because they were being discontinued within like a month from when we chose them. My MOH, Courtney, is amazing and gathered all the girls' measurements and info and got the dresses ordered right in time. Love her! Oh, and because we ordered 7 dresses, all of my alterations are free!

- When we placed the order for my dress we also picked out a crystal headband for me to wear. It kind of gives that princessy feel without actually wearing a tiara. If you've seen the pictures of my dress, I'm wearing the headband. It's lovely! With the headband and the illusion neckline of my dress I've decided that my wedding hairstyle will have to be an updo. Not a way-updo but something so that my hair doesn't cover my chest and back and the lace illusion detail on the dress. I need to do some research for hair inspiration soon. Stay tuned for that in the future!

- We haven't gone back yet to try the ivory sample of my dress because it isn't in yet. I actually need to email them to check on that. I'm antsy to see it in white!

- Our guest list has grown a bit and it looks like our guest count is going to be more like 120. Because of this, we had to crunch some budget numbers and Ryan and I have decided to save more to be able to contribute. I'm alright with this because it's very important to me that the people we really want to be there are able to come.

- We completed and sent in the room block. This was interesting but ended up not being so bad. I did have to write it out in some sort of chart to make it make sense in my head to do the math, though. We just asked everyone in immediate family and the wedding party to estimate how long theyd be staying and went from there. We only included 30 nights which I think/hope shouldnt be a problem to reach.

- After we sent in the questionnaire and room block we received our LOA. For some reason I always imagined the LOA being short. Like a letter. But I was wrong! My best advice is, even if you think you already know everything, definitely read through the whole agreement. Upon reading through ours I found out that we are no longer able to use an outside florist other than for personal floral at our vacations. I think you could do some things outside but other things had to be through Disney and I just didnt want the hassle of 2 florists so I had to give up the lovely outside florist we had found. I was a little upset at first but now I am really fine with it. I know Disney will do a beautiful job, I just think the outside florist may have been a little bit easier to work with. Oh, well!

- DIYs: We started trying out some mercury glass techniques. We want to do a bunch of mercury glass votives (with fake candles, of course) and also mercury glass floral containers. More about that later. Ill post pictures when we have more finished so you can see what Im thinking. I just love the look of mercury glass and its perfect to pull in our pewter color.

- Diane (our consultant) received and processed our LOA and room block and sent us our AP vouchers! So excited!!! Well be activating those soon. More on that later!

- We received our PLANNER! Yay! I got a call from Diane Bowen (yes, another Diane!) who will be our planner and I have also been in contact with her assistant, Jessica. So far they have been fantastic and have always responded to me in a timely manner. Loving them so far!

- We also received our planning kit which, honestly, I have looked at but I am not touching that for a bit. We have a few other things that are a bit more pressing to take care of now and that thing is a big undertaking!

- Finally, we found the brooches we want sewn into the waistline of the bridesmaids and also bracelets for each bridesmaid. I will post pictures of those soon!

Ok, so thats everything that happened during my hiatus. Of course, in the time it took me to write this even more has happened so be expecting another update very shortly! Love you all for reading!

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Wow seems like you got a lot done! I am having my wedding just a few weeks before yours (10-7-13) so I will be following along! I'm excited to see how your planning comes along!

Your shopping report was great! It looked like your all had a lot of fun. I'm glad you're finding a way to save to have everyone you want at the wedding there. And I love mercury candles! They will look great in a wedding.

Your shopping report was great! It looked like your all had a lot of fun. I'm glad you're finding a way to save to have everyone you want at the wedding there. And I love mercury candles! They will look great in a wedding.

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Thank you! I love the mercury glass, too! Not gonna lie, Pinterest has been my inspiration on that one.

A lot more has happened since the last time I posted so I am going to try the listing method again like last time. Let's see...

- A while back we purchased the brooches to be sewn into the waistline of the bridesmaids' dresses. They are bow shapes and very sparkly! My dress will have crystal detail at the wasitline as well so this will help to tie the girls' dresses in with mine. The picture doesn't do the brooch justice but it gives you the general idea. Here is one:

- Also in the category of things for the bridesmaids, I am going to be putting together a gift bag for each of them so I need to start gathering the things I want to go in them. I found some very cute pewter, damask tote bags that we will have embroidered with each girl's monogram in blush. The first thing I knew I wanted to give each girl was a bracelet to wear on the day of the wedding. I wanted something not too small to be unnoticeable but not too big to be gaudy. I thought the search would go on for longer than a day but I found what I wanted right away! I found these beautiful, blush crystal braceletes that are the exact size I wanted. I love them!

Again, I really don't think this picture does the bracelets justice. The crystals catch light in such a beautiful way and the color is just perfect. They were also a good price!

- We have officially booked the wedding with Regina! Regina put together an amazing, custom package for us that will get us 2 photographers (Regina and an assistant, of course) for 8 hours! I am beyond excited about this and just know that are wedding photos are in such good hands! I also need to put together a list of our favorite engagement photos to send to Regina since she is getting ready to create the guest book that was a part of our engagement photo package.

- I've made a lot of progress with our wedding website. This was a much bigger undertaking than I thought it would be! I just want to make sure our guests have all the information presented in an easy to understand way. I really like the website we've chosen to use. It's called Glosite and we will also be doing online RSVPs through it. I have been to a few weddings now with online RSVP and I think it is much easier and very convenient. It also gets people to your wedding website so they will actually look at all the other info! Like where we need them to stay!!! You can also track your entire guest list and even keep note of when you've received gifts and sent thank you notes! It is a very cool website.

If you're curious, feel free to check it out. It's still a work in progress but I am proud of it!

- We’ve narrowed our choices for rehearsal dinners down to 3. It’s really more like 2 though because the last one is a very distant third. We’ll be choosing between doing a catered dinner in the GF marina or Sago Cay (hopefully during wishes!), reserving a room for dinner at Boatwright’s followed by seeing Yeeha Bob, and (our distant third) a special event dinner at Portobello’s in Downtown Disney. We’ll be discussing our options with DF’s parents to make the final decision. I think I’ll do a full post on our choices later to gather my thoughts.

- We’ve been kind of stalling on the DIYs but sometime this weekend we are going to take a day to try things out. I have a lot of DIY things that I would like to do so we really need a sort of testing day. I’ll do a post on all of our DIY ideas, too.

- Here’s a big one. We’ve found our invitations!!! I found them through an Etsy shop called InkandLove after lots and lots of research. If you can’t tell, I am a lover of lace and this invite actually has real lace on the cover and a lace pocket! I love it! We had the seller make up a sample after we made some adjustments to the original and had her do the paper in pewter and the lace in blush. I really love how it turned out! Obviously, the names and wording are not ours but here it is!

I really, really love them so now we just have to get the wording for everything to her and get the full order placed! We decided to skip Save the Dates and just send out our invites at 6 months so that everyone has all the info they need way out and can make travel plans and such.

- We officially have TWO, count em, TWO Disney trips planned for the coming months! Both are short and sweet but that’s how my trips usually are so I’m super excited to have 2 coming up!

The first one will be for 3 days in February for the Disney’s Princess Half Marathon Weekend. If you guys remember, I signed up for the race a while back and have been training for the 13.1 miles. I am nervous but even more excited to do it! I will be doing some trip planning on my new blog so I don’t have to clog up my PJ with it so please, check it out and tell me what you think about the plans once they’re posted!

The Half Marathon trip will have a bit of wedding related stuff going on. It will be a girls trip with my mom, her friend, and I. Since my mom will be with me and she has never seen our wedding venues I really wanted to get a chance to show her the WP and the GF ballrooms. She’s never even been to GF so I am so excited for her to love it as much as I do! I emailed our planner about possible being able to see the venues. I said I would understand if we couldn’t due to weekend weddings but I just really didn’t want to head all the way over there on our own and then not be able to see anything. Well, Jessica, our planner’s assistant got right back to me and said it was no problem at all for us to look around! She asked that I email her a day or two before we come and she will tell us the time slots for when we will be able to get inside the venues and look around. I love her! She really is great and has been a pleasure to work with so far.

The second trip will be from May 3rd to May 5th with DF, my mom, my dad, and myself for our planning session and menu tasting!!! Yes, we finally have a date! I’ll do another post on that as well since it is obviously wedding related but will also do some planning on the new blog. I’ll let you know once it’s up!

Since we already received our AP vouchers, of course, we will be doing the parks on both trips. So excited!!!

-Not wedding related but I wanted to let you all know that I started a blog! I have really enjoyed writing this PJ so far so I thought it would be something I would enjoy. I’ll be writing about lots of Disney things but also all kinds of other stuff so please stop by and comment if you want! I would love to follow any of your blogs as well! You will notice a heavily Disney-inspired title. Here’s the link Second Star to the Right.

That's all for now. Thank you for reading another huge update! You all are lovely!

Ooh, I love love love the invitations! They are so pretty! Good luck in the run. I'm super jealous that you get two trips. I won't be down there until my wedding, which is still over a year away. I bet your mother will love seeing the venues. It will be a special moment for you two. The brooch and bracelet are also super cute